As Singapore grows from the sea, its heritage continues to shrink

Ambitious land reclamation schemes have grown the tiny city-state from 590 km2 to 720km2 within five decades. Its massive hunger for dredged sand has led many neighboring nations to ban the export of sand to Singapore.

Short on space, the city-state has since its independence been reclaiming land to build the nation and to rewrite 'unhygienic' episodes of its history.
— Failed Architecture

In his essay for Failed Architecture, William Jamieson, a PhD candidate in Geography at Royal Holloway, University of London, takes a look at Singapore's monumental land reclamation efforts since 1965, the ecological, urban, and cultural implications, and the inevitable erasing of heritage.

"Singapore sees itself as chronically undersized," Jamieson writes. "It imagines itself as a larger country, and works backwards: materialising the necessary geographical puzzle pieces to suit the demands of the global economy as much as to satiate its own needs. Space is not merely flexible, but hypothetical."